Most of us have wondered what it would be like to pack bag and baggage, move to a remote area of the country, be able to cut all ties to the outside world if necessary and live off-grid. Quite a daunting task, and a bit scary. But it can be done, as evidenced by Bud and Judy who did just that around 9 years ago, and are thriving today because of it.

I asked Bud what their motivation was, and he said: “We just wanted to do things on our own.” Well, they are doing just that. Isolated from the artificial existence of city life, cocooned in the warm glow of self-sufficiency and ready to cut the ties to civilization at any moment, Bud and Judy are living a life that most of us only dream about, and I was about to get a peak at their hideaway… READ MORE

Out of a gallon of raw Jersey milk, leaving about a half inch of cream on the top, I got 9 oz of butter, and 12 oz of buttermilk.

At my last store adventure, I priced 16 oz of butter at around $2.60, a gallon of milk at around $3.00, and buttermilk runs around $3.50 per half gallon. I paid $3.00 for a gallon of raw milk and made both butter and buttermilk, and had 3/4 of a gallon of raw milk left. Do the math!!!

Instructions:

Skim the cream off the raw milk after it has risen to the top. Place the cream in a food processor and turn on. Process until the butter separates from the buttermilk. Strain the buttermilk from the butter, and rinse the butter in cold water. Now shape it any way you want, refrigerate and drink the buttermilk before anyone gets to it!

Seasonings can be spendy, and full of things that we don’t really want to put into our bodies. So, how can you make sure that you get 100% organic, healthy seasonings? One way is to grow and prepare them yourself. Here is a simple way to make onion powder using Egyptian Walking Onions. They are extremely easy to keep, as they come back every year by themselves, and the harvest is bountiful.

Here is where it starts, at the onion bed. These onions will develop a cluster of small bulbs that can be harvested and eaten – delicious!

Step 1

Harvest the tops of your Walking Onions by simply grabbing the top cluster of bulbs and popping them off. Rinse, and let dry. (more…)

For years we at Farm Wars have dug in and fought to take our message of family farming independence and survival to as many people as would listen. I am happy to announce that an opportunity to extend this message to a wider audience came when Darcy Dennett contacted me about filming an episode of Our America with Lisa Ling. This was to be a short documentary about surviving the middle class crash. Well, that’s right up our alley here at the ranch! So, hello mainstream media – ready or not, here we come!

Initial Contact

There I was, minding my own business, tending to the critters – both on the ranch and on Farm Wars the website, when it came. Quite frankly, I was taken by surprise. I was totally unprepared for what was about to transpire. But I digress…

It came in the form of an email. Yes, a simple email. This email looked no different than the rest, with nothing to distinguish itself other than an outrageous claim that it was from one of the producers of Our America with Lisa Ling, airing on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). Yeah, right. But I got curious and checked it out the next day. When I say checked it out, I mean CHECKED IT OUT. Let’s just say I don’t like scams, and have a tendency to route them out. Well, it turns out this wasn’t a scam. This was the real deal, so I responded. The producer, Darcy, and I started talking back and forth, and before long, arranged a time for the crew to come by the ranch and shoot an episode titled Lost American Dream.

Yes folks, the Our America crew was coming to Farm Wars to film us in our natural habitat. Then the fun began… (more…)

The Seed Lady Network is dedicated to open source seed sharing, free from transgenic contamination and patent piracy. To this end, every effort is being made to provide an environment to share private seed stock and keep sources for traditional non-GMO seeds available to the people for generations to come. Our intention is to provide safe alternatives for individuals and families who wish to avoid consumption of genetically altered foods.

If you have been saving seeds from that special veggie and would like to share some with others, list your seeds on the Network. Whether you are offering them for free to replenish another’s lost stock, or would like to trade for something else to add to your collection, just list your terms in the ad along with your contact information, and swap away!

Seed Lady is designed to be a horizontally integrated platform for individual seed sharers to reach out across the globe with their precious seed resources, in order to combat growing corporate control over our food supply, starting with the seed.

The Seed Lady Team encourages everyone, both individual seed swappers and established seed companies, to take the following non-biotech seed source pledge:

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? It is a heady and perplexing question, to be sure.

Like the classical philosophers of old, I do not have an acceptable answer, either. I’m not even going to try.

However, for more and more people across this land, a more appropriate and timely question has evolved.

They now ask themselves if perhaps they should acquire some chickens, which could provide some tasty eggs for their morning breakfast. People are now looking at their backyards with fresh eyes, searching for a handy and level spot to erect that new chicken coop.

Unfortunately, the next question becomes all to prominent and leaps to center stage: Is it legal? Now there’s a question! Again, it is also not so easy to answer in simple terms. This can of worms is large, and it holds more slithering things than your well-tended compost pile.

For lack of a better term, the backyard chicken movement is exploding across the country, much to the chagrin of local jurisdictions and the faceless bureaucratic machine. It is a suburban, and increasingly urban phenomena. Well-informed citizens are demanding high-quality, locally grown food. Imagine that! The local food movement continues to gain momentum, with more followers and practitioners every day. It’s a national issue now, and it is not going away anytime soon. But it starts on the local level, and chickens are a big part of it. (more…)

The first thing you need to do is–obviously–find a pallet. I’ve had good luck finding them in dumpsters behind supermarkets. No need to be squeamish. It doesn’t smell. At least, it doesn’t smell that bad. Don’t just take the first pallet you find. You’re looking for one with all the boards in good condition, no nails sticking out, no rotting, etc. If you intend to put edibles in your pallet, be sure to find one that was heat treated as opposed to fumigated with pesticides. READ MORE…